


circle close

by themartianwitch



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, F/M, M/M, Mindscape Shenanigans, Multi, a beach is involved, ambiguous polyamory, several layers of emotional repression peeling at the edges all at once, your dog taking up the whole couch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 09:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17958059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themartianwitch/pseuds/themartianwitch
Summary: Getting Kaldur to put down his armor every once and a while takes more than just offering him a change of clothes for the night; it’s a mission in and of itself that requires mindful strategizing, delicate execution, and overall, a coordinated team effort. Luckily, Conner and M'gann are a team.





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M’gann scoots herself closer to the edge of the patio chair that’s been levitated into the garage.  The wall behind Kaldur has already been folded back to hide the zeta tube through which she and Conner practically had to drag him through from the Watchtower, or so it felt.  She knows the fluorescent light overhead is suitable for detail-oriented work—not so much on the plane of existence she’s about to operate in, but it’s nonetheless a comfort. The hands in her lap unfold to form a cradle. “I’m ready if you are.”

Kaldur nods, a gesture that only calls her attention to how empty the spaces between his neck and shoulders look without waterbearers attached to his back, and how rare the sight of him out of uniform’s become. The way the sleeveless shirt Conner’s lent him hugs him tight as he leans forward shows how much he’s grown over M’gann’s eight years of knowing him, but exposes him in such a way that makes her wonder just how much of that is really shell, even if not in the physical sense. 

“Our agreement is the same?” Kaldur asks, looking up to meet her eyes, and M’gann’s hands stop halfway to his temples.

“Just a light scan to confirm that the work we did to heal your psyche back to how it was before I… broke it is still holding up. And I say _nothing_ about anything I see in there unless it’s _serious_.” She nods for emphasis. “At least not without your permission first.”

“I understand if the responsibility of maintaining these terms is proving difficult, given their complicated nature.” His back straightens, and she straightens her own to match him.  “Two years has likely been long enough since the restoration to keep monitoring the situation without any further problems having arisen.”

_The restoration_ , as if the architecture of his mental Atlantis was set in literal stone. Regarding a mind as being truly “ _broken_ ” has always been meant in Martian culture as a disturbing highlight of its object-like fragility, not a casual downplay of its living nature. But maybe it’s just that _she_ hasn’t made that clear, and besides, she can’t _really_ expect the connotation to be universal across telepathic and non-telepathic cultures alike, can she?

“Well, the _responsibility_ I brought on myself, and I’ve fully accepted it. That hasn’t changed.” She pulls her hands back into her lap, only to quickly change her mind and raise them in surrender instead. “B-but if you’re telling me that you don’t want me entering your mind anymore, I totally understand, and respect that!”

“No, that is not what I mean,” he responds with an assuring tone, but doesn’t elaborate. Her brow furrows. She’s gotten spoiled, she supposes, by hers and Conner’s mutual agreement moving forward to be as clear, direct, and honest with each other as they can—the thought of delving past the surface of Kaldur’s psyche just to read the discomfort with her presence there that he was too uncomfortable with her to share verbally makes her stomach turn, but sharing _that_ discomfort with _him_ could mean pressuring him to make a decision for her sake and not his own.

But she really did bring this all on herself.

“Then shall we…?” she asks, offering her hands again with a soft smile, though keeping a discreet eye out for any twitch or twinge of hesitance. He nods again, the solemn line of his own mouth not breaking, and closes his eyes as his temples meet her palms.

It hasn’t changed. What she’d once left in ruins and then made whole— _holos,_ Kaldur had managed to utter as they’d started the process, his innate knowledge of the structure of his mind directing her power through their joined hands, him guiding her even then—is still whole.  Poseidonis’s “sky,” or the space M’gann can’t help but read as one as she hovers overhead, is clear of debris, and thousands of lights swirl in pathways below the city’s intact energy dome, its surface as smooth and clear as glass. Platforms inside hold their natural edges, gentle irregularities in their shapes brought on by the suggestion of gradual erosion, not abrupt violence, and they cluster tightly around the tallest amongst them instead of drifting in disarray. She lowers herself just enough to pick out the shapes of buildings, read columns and arches in their correct arrangements, and to even perceive the movement of figures between them. The whole scene looks alive and welcoming, or at least not _unwelcoming_ from the distance she’s promised to keep.

Though the air—or _water_ , Hel- _lo_ , Megan—is still so cold. Colder than it should read to an Atlantean, or a Martian for that matter, and that’s a detail she’s never quite understood but that has stayed consistent from the initial completion of his recovery and every check-up after. She’s sworn to herself and him that she won’t press for explanations lightly. The same applies to his lack of apparent presence each time she’s returned, despite how distinctly she can _feel_ him, which she chalks up to him wanting to give her space to make her evaluations.

_[I do also want to still check that one spot,]_ she thinks to him. _[If that’s alright with you.]_

_[Where we began the process?]_ answers his voice in her head—or at least, that’s how it impresses itself upon her.

_[Right. I was still, um, getting my **sea legs** with this when we started, and you were just starting to reform an active consciousness, so I… still kinda worry about it.]_

She feels a warm chuckle tickle at her own throat at her pun, and her whole chest fills with its own warmth that she does her best to harness as she projects a smile back at him.

_[I understand.]_ The water around her begins to swirl, and she wills her mental eyes shut to let Kaldur transport her across the distance himself. It may more or less be a token gesture, considering all she saw during the _restoration_ , as he called it, but she prefers this method over wandering her way through his mind and bumping into fresh secrets.  Or worse, breaking any carefully-laid block or tile— or even displacing a pebble—and severing any vital connection between memories and information. His psyche’s defenses may be letting her in now without Artemis as a buffer, but she can’t help but feel her own weight double, even triple as she feels herself descend past the energy field, like a footfall alone from her would leave fissures in the earth. But she knows she’s just perceiving the pressure that would, in reality, exist at this depth, and letting her subconscious twist it into a reminder of the pressure she’s willed upon herself, through her own actions.

She knows, because she does this every time she comes here. And that’s _not_ what she’s allowed to let herself use this place for anymore. She can beat herself up in her own mind later. Right now, she’s here for Kaldur.

Though sure enough, M’gann’s feet do soon find themselves a surface upon which to land, and when she opens her eyes, it _is_ with a familiar cold sting in her chest at the sight of Tula.

The sight of Tula cast in _stone_ , that is, and M’gann can’t help but gawk. She’s watched the representation of Tula in his mind shift from silent hovering ghost to ghostly projected hologram, but this development is new. It’s still a memorial, but… something tangible, or at least with the impression of being so (it’s not like she’d dare _touch_ it). And… finite, like years of wondering and longing and aching have run their course, finished shaping the significance of Tula’s life in his into something to always be remembered, but with a beginning, middle, and end.

Kaldur choosing not to manifest himself beside her might be for the best after all, because her reflex is to want to pounce on him and squeeze him tight… but admittedly, what reads like a positive breakthrough in the _grieving_ process would be a _highly_ insensitive thing to start hopping up and down over. 

She turns her focus instead to the rest of what she’d once stumbled upon as a displaced chunk of earth half-buried under the debris of a collapsed wall, and that has now been returned to its original structure as a small circular temple.  The incomplete pillars she and Kaldur had initially set up in place have kept hold of all their pieces found later, down to every last crumbled grain of marble filling in every last crack. The floor, once littered with shards of tile both scattered across and floating above its surface, has kept its tiles firmly packed together in the elegant wave-like patterns that spiral down the platform’s steps, with blue hues so deep and vibrant that they stand out even in the underwater atmosphere. 

And the statue of the warrior still stands at the center of it all, still raising his spear high above his head. It was the first thing she and Kaldur repaired, and M’gann can’t forget the crack that her eyes could once trace along its—his—hips from having been broken completely in half. Its— _his_ —stance has always read to her as proud, if maybe a little recklessly so; the shield held aloft at his side seems more like decoration than anything when his fully chiseled chest looks fully exposed, his muscles too defined to suggest adequately protective armor—though, even by superhero standards? Perhaps she’s overthinking it. But the expression on his face has always looked so resigned despite the pride in his stance—even the sculpted Tula behind him projects more emotion, with her hands on her hips and her mouth an inch away from a smile. M’gann’s shoulders feel heavy just meeting this warrior’s blank gaze, and regarding the familiar high contours of his cheekbones and chin peeking through his helmet.  That weight, that _pressure_ comes down on her again, though scanning her own thoughts, she can’t read its parallel in her own mind like she could before.  She goes to rub the side of her neck, but her hand is blocked by dark ice, metallic and sharp and _cold—_ a plate of armor—her hand is _trapped_ in jet black webbing, no skin or magic peaking through despite the water starting to swirl again—and as a broken line shoots across the warrior’s body in a harsh blue light like a sideways strike of lightning, her whole body _freezes_ —

The garage lights overhead cast hers and Kaldur’s shadows together into one dark pit as she comes up for air, edges blurring and oscillating as her eyes work to regain focus on the physical plane. A drop of sweat falls into the pit, leaving an even darker dot, and from their sticky foreheads pressed together she can’t tell whose it was. She keeps her hands on his head—and him, his head in her hands, leaning the full weight of it into her touch— _too much_ , she thinks, and a whole new wave of panic crashes against the inside of her chest—she turns his head upward to check his face, hands trembling with the fear of her meeting blank eyes—

Only to find eyes simply _opening_ , and his pupils dilating naturally to the shift in light before focusing on her. Her breath finds its way back to a pace steady enough to let her speak—though it’s not as if she knows where to start.

“ _Are you_ —”

“Does something concern you?” _he_ asks _her_ with a voice somewhat hoarse as he gently lowers her hands by the wrists. They hover there for a moment as fists, and her pulling them away only comes once she’s adequately fought off the urge to latch onto his arms as if for dear life—and not _hers_. “Our sessions usually do not so abruptly.”

Her eyes plead with his for a sign of what he saw. Of what _she_ saw, of what he saw her seeing, of what she saw him see himself as—

It _hasn’t_ changed. Not really. Every piece is still in place, still holds cohesive logic—she’s just seen a little more. She just finally understands it now, the cold, the distance—

And their agreement is for her to check that her repair work has held up, not to fix what _she_ didn’t break.

The most his eyes are willing to tell her is that he’s there, but tired. The dark circles underneath betray what his unwavering stare won’t, and what she won’t either, despite her nerves screaming for her to acknowledge silence as its own form of betrayal.  “Nothing,” she says finally, and chills run down both her arms at the sound of her own voice saying it. Her hands clench around her knees.

On the patio table beside them, also pulled into the garage just for this, their two teacups have long lost their steam. Kaldur’s fingers only _just_ get the chance to loop delicately around the handle of his when M’gann jerks up out of her seat. “I-I could run that back upstairs and heat it up! You could stay here, o-or come with! It would only take a… moment.”

“It is nice of you to offer,” Kaldur says as he pushes his chair back and rises to his feet, “But unnecessary.”

“Alright.” She drops back to her seat and smiles up at him as he moves to exit the garage. He does not meet her eyes. Concentric circles ripple through the tea in her cup as the door slides open then falls shut behind her.

She senses Conner put out a signal for her on the psychic plane from the upper floor, and she whispers an “ _Okay_ ” for him to hear as warning before establishing the link. It’s an extra step that they’d more or less phased out over their past two years of reconnecting, but right now she needs to feel like she’s doing what’s appropriate _and_ doing all she can.

She knows it’s bad they still so rarely feel like the same thing.

_[Not tryin’ to eavesdrop,]_ thrums Conner’s voice softly in her mind, _[But I just heard a heart… freakin’ out down there. ]_

_[…Just mine?]_

_[It was only one of you.]_ He projects the notion of a shrug over the link. _[So if it **was** you, then… yeah. What was that about? I mean—]_

She can sense Conner swallowing pronouncedly, just as she notices her hands have sought out her cup to wrap around and hold, despite her inability to truly warm it up just by touch.

_[I mean if you’re allowed to say.]_

_[I don’t… know, to be honest. Really.]_ Her heels dig into the edge of her seat as she leans back into her chair with her cup. _[But I **think** it’s your turn now.]_

 

\--

Conner’s feet reach where the sand turns from hot and dry to warm and wet, and the grainy mush sticking in clumps between his toes is all the more encouragement for him to get to the water. Kaldur moves at a much more casual pace, feet falling so softly that they press smooth indents into the wet sand without upturning any crumbs at the edges. It’s something that must just come naturally to Atlanteans, Conner guesses, recalling the craters his half-Kryptonian limbs used to leave in Earth’s, well, _earth_.

But by the fourth glance Kaldur casts back over his shoulder, how _in his element_ Kaldur actually is starts to become suspect.

“It’s not exactly a _private_ beach, but it’s still pretty remote,” Conner calls out, leaning back a little in his stance in the hopes that the hands at his hips don’t project too much impatience. He can feel the line of the water’s surface slide up to the backs of his calves. “The locals mostly steer clear ever since…”

Ever since the sudden explosion two years ago taking out most of a nearby mountain, he thinks, and the line Cobert fed the press about “investigating a natural phenomenon” after League members got spotted shifting through the wreckage. He still gets a funny look now and then when a new customer learns he’s based so close to the harbor; luckily, being deemed a reckless weirdo on top of turning out good work really only helps his reputation with bikers.

“Since, y’know, th’storms.”

“I see,” Kaldur says, now close enough for Conner to have gotten away with muttering. The water greets Kaldur with two quiet _flups_ as the line of it finally passes over his feet, but his gaze is still distant, just directed now out over the ocean instead of back towards land. The tension between his eyes lets up a bit, but only a bit.

“Besides,” Conner decides to add, “It’s not like you’re in costume. Nobody’s gonna spot the head of the Justice League and come running for… I dunno, an autograph?”

“I…” 

_Didn’t realize it was that obvious,_ Conner thinks. 

“…Have you to thank for that, yes.” Referring, Conner knows, to the shirt and shorts lent to him to make up for being zeta’d straight to Happy Harbor from the Watchtower, though both of them already ditched their shirts for now back up on dry land. “Though I am not sure an autograph is what would most likely be asked of me, nor is it truly among my concerns.”

“What, ‘s’th’press gonna nail you for a _statement of accountability_ for the latest piece of public property _Billy’s_ been knocked into?”

Kaldur lets out a sigh, a distinct raggedness to the sound that his footprints went without, though Conner catches the tide starting to dissolve their clean edges as it pushes past then pulls back in around Kaldur’s ankles. “ _You would be surprised_.”

“Eh, I’ve seen enough of Godfrey’s show that—”

“ _Say no more._ ” 

An old instinct that Conner’s not exactly looking to ever shake _completely_ makes his neck and shoulders tense as Kaldur punctuates his response with the palm of his hand, but before letting himself respond, Conner lets the sound and sight hang for a moment in the air. A commanding hand from Kaldur is straight and flat, and tighter between the fingers, but Conner can see webbing peek out from under wilting fingertips that hang right from the tilt of a loose wrist; a commanding tone from Kaldur is solid and deep, but the well-worn rasp already present in his voice didn’t exactly just suddenly _heal_ —

“I hear you,” Conner finally replies. 

That was a _plea_.

As they wade further into the ocean, the paces at which the two of them move start to even out, then invert as the water slides Kaldur forward and drags at Conner’s knees. The sounds their bodies make against the water only tug lightly along the surface of Conner’s hearing, all footfalls muffled by the weight and vastness of the ocean. That vastness spans out beyond him and Kaldur almost like a map of possible conversation topics: endless yet vague, with the only notable landmarks being the jagged shards of rock left anchored in the distance, and two years’ worth of ebbing and flowing not having been nearly enough to smooth out the edges. It occurs to Conner, at one point, to try asking how Kaldur’s mom and dad have been, only for him to acknowledge that if the words leave his mouth, specifying _which_ dad—“ _y’know, the **not** -evil one”_—will come practically as a reflex. He rubs his lips together to try to massage out the impulse, get the right words planned and ready, but his mouth just clamps tighter shut. 

The line of the water starts to rise past Kaldur’s waist, and suddenly Conner finds it at his own, with a grip firm enough to make keeping feet on the ground optional. His heart usually jumps at any opportunity to sample of the feeling of flight, but just like when he had to hover above the crowd at Cape Canaveral to dupe them into thinking he was Superman, then had to share that sky with M’gann and the uncomfortable tension still between them at the time, drifting in silence with just the sight of Kaldur’s back sends the wrong kind of adrenaline rushing through his system. His hands go from floating flat on the surface to curling into fistfuls of water, and he puts his feet back to the earth to anchor himself in more ways than one.

“Not exactly the ‘long walks and talks on the beach’ type, huh.” His tone resounds in his own ears as more aggressive than he actually meant it, and though he can’t think of what to add to salvage the quip, he at least can act on the warning sign that he’s due for a deep breath. 

Kaldur turns to face Conner with a prepared smile, and the fluid motion of his body in the water generates a perfect circle around him that expands in slowly-separating arcs across the surface. One vanishes along its path inches before it otherwise could break from contact with Conner’s ribs. An almost-touch. “From what I understand of surface-world customs,” Kaldur’s smile hovers through its pause, neither widening nor slipping out of its intended shape, “it would perhaps come easier to you if you tried it with M’gann.”

The hairs on the back of Conner’s neck stand on end—unfairly, Conner knows, since Kaldur’s _handling_ of him isn’t and has never actually been meant to be patronizing. But in all fairness to himself, it’s just the lack of vulnerability, the lack of any real distinct emotion to his smile and his voice that makes it read bad—and while not what Kaldur was implying, he does find himself suddenly in want of something that he’s never had this kind of trouble getting from M’gann.

Having the issue diagnosed, at least, makes his shoulders feel free to ease back down. “Eh, ‘surface-world’ customs can be kinda hit-or-miss for me. Proposal was a hit though.” Conner had built up a reflex over the month he kept the little black ring box in the pocket of his jeans to check whenever the thought of it crossed his mind that it hadn’t fallen out, and it’s a reflex he’s yet to shake. Though as he dips his hand now into the water to pat the hip against which the box had sat, it’s mostly out of pride. 

Kaldur just nods, and gives the same calm congratulations he’d given when M’gann showed him the ring. And again, in all fairness, if Kaldur had been able to maintain his usual demeanor even as M’gann nearly bopped him upside the chin by bouncing so much while showing him the ring on her finger, Conner couldn’t really expect _more_ emotion from him now, _but_ —

“But actually, I was talkin’ about you.”

The smooth line of Kaldur’s brow bends and breaks with the unsynchronized rising of both eyebrows, and Conner swears he can see both sets of gills stand on end.

“I-I am afraid the symbolic significance of a beach is different across _all_ of Atlantean culture than it is on the surface world. The idea of traversing one is more… it is more like…” Kaldur yanks a hand with which to gesture out from underneath the surface of the water—and the sound in Conner’s ears is a splash like the sheet of the sea tearing open. Conner quickly tunes his hearing back to the appropriate level of focus. “A mythologized concept,” Kaldur continues after twirling his fingers to conjure up the words. “Similar, as you might expect, to how surface-dwellers view walking amongst the clouds, given how few actually experience it.”

_What part of “I was actually talking about **you** ” did_—no, dial it back. _Nice try, but I know this isn’t exactly your first time on a **beach**_ —still not good. “ _Ouch_ ,” Conner decides to respond, though with a smirk he’s waiting to see if Kaldur will catch. 

“…I apologize, I meant no offense.” Most of the water not inclined to cling to Kaldur’s skin finishes dripping back into its source, but the few lingering plinks keep Conner’s ears teased in that direction, and he can’t help but detect a quickening pulse inside Kaldur that makes his own speed to catch up. 

“None taken!” replies Conner with a determined cheer, and like a last line of defense, Kaldur offers a smile. Strain manages to peak through the edges of his eyes and mouth like gaps in his guard, and Conner decides it’s now or never. He wades across the space between them and claps a hand onto Kaldur’s shoulder. It neither yields to his touch nor tenses against it, just dips a little with the added weight. 

“But I think we’re _both_ … kinda out of practice with this, at least with it being just us.”

Kaldur’s head dips down just like his shoulder as he lets out a sigh, but as he breathes back in, both come back up to connect with Conner, bone pushing up into Conner’s palm and eyes finally meeting Conner’s directly. “You mean our conversation,” he states—not asks—with a sigh.

“You’re calling it that?”

A laugh bubbles up lightly from the inside of Kaldur’s throat, making his gills flutter against air. “Consider it my being generous.”

“Well, if you wanna be generous, how about…” Conner takes several wide steps back onto slightly higher land, and on the final step, digs himself two little grooves in the ocean floor with the heels of his feet. With the water now just below his hips, he pulls his elbows back to display two fists at the ready. 

“Here? You will be disadvantaged.” 

Conner holds his stance, feeling tension pop loose in his neck as he shrugs one shoulder then the other. “All the more reason.”

“I understand.” A stock response from Kaldur, but with a noticeable trace of eagerness in his tone as he seeks out his own starting position by taking steps further back into the water. The sun has fallen low enough that the distance makes his expression hard for Conner to keep a clear read on, but also renders his silhouette stark against the backdrop of the open horizon, and with his body halfway in and out of the water as a match for Conner’s, he gives Conner a nod. Conner sends it right back at him.

And then Kaldur, seemingly poised to lunge forward, drops straight down and disappears completely. 

Conner’s mind chooses _then_ to make the spatial calculations. 

“ _Hey_.”

Even with his momentum hampered by the pull of the water, the air still ripples in Conner’s wake with enough force to peel back the waves as he immediately pushes off the ground. The gap left in the ocean’s cover reveals Kaldur as having already been less than a foot away, with arms locked at the wrists before him to form a battering ram for Conner’s ankles. Kaldur catches his footing on the exposed sea floor and holds, unflinchingly, as waves crash back against him from all around. The arc of Conner’s leap drops him back onto the shoreline, just as he intended, though he finds the soles of his feet caked once again in sticky, grainy sand. Kaldur makes his own way back to the relatively dry land before Conner can finish wiping even _one_ foot’s sole against the inside of its opposite leg, though Conner realizes the effort was wasted anyway as he drops the foot back into the sand. 

Letting out a roar for authenticity’s sake, but feeling the smile digging into his face hamper its ferocity, Conner charges at Kaldur. His feet slip a little at first, but fall deeper and deeper straight into the sand the closer he gets; the feeling he focuses on though is an internal sense of weight shifting side-to-side, his body feeding him an expectation of how an engaged opponent preparing to dodge an attack from whatever angle necessary—of how _Kaldur_ —should be moving. 

But Kaldur just waits, crouched but statue-still. By the time that cold, knowing gaze is close enough to be read in crisp detail, a hard twinge replaces the sensation in Conner’s chest and tells him he needs to try something else. What starts as a swing of the fist Conner had in the air stops and snaps back at the elbow just as Kaldur locks his forearms across his head and abdomen to block it, and Conner’s arms then move to match Kaldur’s defensive position.

Kaldur blinks, but within the timespan of that blink, accepts the expectations of his new role—only for Conner to dodge his punch instead of taking it by ducking forward then dropping his palms to the ground. It’s subpar support on this terrain, as the shift of his weight forward immediately plunges his hands past the wrists into the wet sand, but it’s enough to let him swing one leg straight out at Kaldur from underneath himself. The leg connects with the back of one of Kaldur’s ankles, but superficially; even as Conner bends his knee to hook Kaldur’s leg in, skin just slides against skin as Kaldur slips his foot out of the would-be hold and pushes off against the outside of Conner’s thigh to propel a jump backwards, the force of which knocks Conner off his toes and onto his knees.

“That is an odd variation on Black Canary’s technique,” Kaldur remarks, waiting with hands still out in front of him as fists while Conner makes it back onto two feet. “It proved unusually easy to counteract.”

“Yeah, it _was_ missin’ the part where Cassie leapfrogs off my back,” Conner admits, wiping sandy hands off on his shorts. “Or where Bart uses me like a ramp.”

“I see. The unexpected inclusion of Wonder Girl or Impulse in that maneuver _would_ compensate for its telegraphed intent.”

“You mean Kid Flash.”

Kaldur’s eyes go deer-in-the-headlights wide, and his fists drop to his sides. Conner can’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“Bart’s Kid Flash now.”

“…Yes. My mistake.” Kaldur then gives a quick nod as request to resume their session, and sparing himself a deep contemplation (at least for now) of what opportunity Kaldur’s really had to actually get to _know_ most of the current Team—even _before_ being nominated for League membership—Conner nods back.

Having no room, as far as Conner’s concerned, to be talking about telegraphed intent, Kaldur immediately turns and dashes back towards the water. Conner’s options are the usual, really, when he really boils it down: wait, run, jump, smash. But a fissure formed by slamming both fists into the ground would only divert water _into_ Kaldur’s path and help him get away faster, and the shallows wouldn’t give enough cushion to keep the blow of Conner crashing down upon him from breaking a bone. Waiting tends to be a last resort, and not exactly a favorite—so after stomping a bit in place to get his feet calibrated for effective movement across the sand, Conner takes off into water after Kaldur. His and Kaldur’s footfalls splash and overlap in his ears, spare but erratic like empty applause, and like empty applause, he tunes it out. Kaldur loses no momentum as his sprint ends with a dive once he’s far enough in to go under again, and having focused on catching up, Conner suddenly finds himself once again waist-deep in the ocean.

“Oops” comes out under his breath and he internally shushes himself, but nothing can fully silence the lapping of the water against his legs as he backtracks onto relatively solid ground. His eyes and ears skim the water’s surface for any sign of unnatural motion in its subtle but steady waves, but in the ocean he knows he’s a spec, just seeking out another spec. All is still enough for long enough that a seagull passes by at close range, screeching triumphantly—about what, who knows, but the bird’s really rubbing it in, because Conner himself feels all but defeated.

All sense of combat tension in his muscles deflates, and he puts one hand to his hip while the other shields his squinting eyes from already fading light. It’s a vain attempt to feel like continuing to stare out at nothing will do any good. If he just spooked Kaldur into booking it all the way back to Atlantis by bringing up the Team, then he’s _not_ going to be able to hold his breath long enough to play catch-up, so he’s _going_ to have to get M’gann to gill up and pursue him, and _that’s_ going to mean interrupting her making dinner. It’s not like she’ll be mad, really, she just doesn’t like leaving an oven unattended.

Conner’s other hand doesn’t make it to his other hip before his whole body suddenly drops down and spins around a pillar of water before him, one that wields two glowing fists that pass by in a flash and a leg streaming a current of water through the air to reinforce its push against the backs of his knees. Conner’s feet go just as airbourne as the water. The back of his head does hit a pillow of soft sand, but the shock would still have been enough to momentarily steal his breath even if his nose and mouth hadn’t instinctually shut at contact with the saltwater now shimmering across his field of vision.

Not that some didn’t still make it into his nose and mouth, and as he pushes himself up into a sitting position, he turns his head to spit some back into where it came from. Kaldur waits, understandably, until he’s finished snorting and sputtering it all out to offer him a hand.

“You… let me have that one,” Kaldur states as Conner grabs hold of his forearm. He’s _wrong_ , but unable to decide if his tone is incredulous or… genuinely touched, Conner does in fact let him have _that_ one. Neither of them are all that breathless, even after Conner’s momentary lapse in oxygen supply, but Conner can _feel_ Kaldur’s pulse thrumming through his skin top of being able to hear it loud and clear, and it feels good to have wrung that much of a response out of him.

“What’s the point of sparring by the water if I don’t get dunked at least once?” Conner responds with a laugh. Taking advantage of still having ahold of Kaldur, he sneaks his other hand up to give the outside of Kaldur’s other arm a few strong pats, jostling him a bit. And the expression on Kaldur’s face shifts slightly as well, but not in the direction of loosening up. 

“I do not advise practicing a non- _strategic_ surrender.”

Conner’s grip around Kaldur’s wrist tightens. It’s more productive than letting out the gust of a sigh quickly building its strength up in his chest. “Right, because all _your_ surrenders have been _strictly_ strategic.”

_“Excuse me?”_

Conner hears that spike in Kaldur’s pulse again, but it might not be a sign that he’s getting anywhere after all. He holds Kaldur’s expectant stare and fights the urge to let his own brow furrow just as defensively.

_None of us would have blamed you for being messed up about your family ties, or about Tula—_

Unless he’s suddenly manifested the ability to directly transmit thoughts without M’gann’s help, thinking _at_ Kaldur isn’t the same as thinking _to_ him. And he can’t—won’t—think _for_ him either, that’s _his_ right.

“Said what I meant.” Conner lets go of Kaldur’s wrist and starts back towards dry land, back towards his t-shirt and the house. He could shoot a glance back over his shoulder at Kaldur, but it wouldn’t tell him anything, and maybe he doesn’t even need an emotional response quite right now. “Think about it.”

 

\--

They keep a photograph of Mount Justice—once _whole_ , once _home_ —hung on a wall of their current living quarters. It is something that he should have expected. He should _not_ be so relieved that after dinner has come a dimming of one overhead light, the extinguishing of the other, and a move to a sofa and chair facing a corner of the room where only the television is positioned as focal point. 

Though turned on, but otherwise left unengaged with, the television does manage to remind Kaldur of a screen full of static at the Cave that he was warned by Conner once—only once, as he took care never to need a second warning—to make no attempt to adjust as his hand came near the remote. But this screen is instead the more modern solid blue, a necessary upgrade given the loss of the old system, and while he expects harshness in its light to strain his eyes every time they dare wander back to it, it hums at a frequency in his vision that instead welcomes his stare. There is a potent but subdued glow to it, not unlike the sun flooding the surface of the ocean or of his own eyelids with enough light to be visible from underneath. Five much smaller lights flicker in amber tones against the wash of blue over this corner of the room in determination to make themselves seen, and the inherent wit of M’gann’s decision to acquire such authentic-looking artificial candles for the room’s arrangement speaks so much for itself that he has yet to find satisfactory words with which to comment on it.

It is perhaps a moot point, however, as M’gann seems no longer conscious enough to receive a compliment. Her series of silent but determined smiles sent Kaldur’s way has seemingly run its course for the evening, and to his shame, he is just as appreciative of the end to her effort as he was of the effort itself, for matching it proved tiring—though, perhaps, for her as well, given her current state. The swirling of her fingertips around tufts of Wolf’s fur has slowed to a stop, and her head has made a decisive tilt down to one side.

He can recall that same tilt of her head against the tight steel band of an inhibitor collar as it kept two red lights pinned to her throat like a pair of vengeful eyes. And though her wrists had been uncuffed by the time he was healed enough to truly perceive her outside of his mind—no coincidence, he is sure—it is good to see her like this now.

“Let me guess, he’s in my spot,” Conner calls out as he leaves the kitchen area, wiping his hands on his jeans, and Kaldur’s success where M’gann has failed in having maintained consciousness comes into question. He failed to catch the end of the whishing and clattering sounds of the dishwashing process, as well as to notice the kitchen light going dark behind him.

A lapse in situational awareness that he does not expect from himself, as his experience has made up for any and all gaps left in his training tenfold, a hundredfold. Few sounds or motions went unaccounted for in his time aboard either of Black Manta’s main vessels, and he had Tigress to pick up his slack in his time spent unable to fully process his surroundings. His position now calls for no less attention to and evaluation of detail.

Though he supposes his position _now_ has him neither tucked secretively beneath the ocean’s currents nor suspended high above the clouds of Earth’s atmosphere, just seated in a cushioned armchair in Conner and M’gann’s living room. He pushes himself an inch or two back from the very edge of his seat, and as opposed to the joints of its frame, the surface of the vinyl creaks with the shifting of his weight—an indication of the chair’s relative newness. He opts to hold himself up straight rather than feel his own impact against the back of it as well. 

“If you refer to the space left unoccupied by M’gann, and the space occupied by M’gann as hers…” Kaldur finally replies, directing his mind back to his current role as Conner reaches the sofa, “I’m afraid Wolf has actually claimed both.”

The sideways smirk on Conner’s face as he peers over the back of the sofa cannot match the pure satisfaction in Wolf’s expression, of the upper lip falling with gravity into a placid exposing of teeth, as Wolf lies with his head in M’gann’s lap and the rest of his body splayed out across the other two cushions. His curled tail even drapes itself possessively across the curve of the sofa’s arm. 

“Pretty sure the window seat’s big enough, boy,” Conner chides as he reaches down to rub the exposed but toughened tendons of a Kobra Venom scar on the inside of Wolf’s hind leg, and Wolf gives some half-hearted kicks and swishes of his tail. The same skin then receives two conclusive pats from Conner’s hand, and Wolf goes still. His tail ends up falling back to rest inside the crook of the sofa’s arm, however, and after giving the side of M’gann’s head a similar check-in touch—to no response, certainly not one resembling Wolf’s—Conner seats himself atop the only space left for him. The resumed creaking of the armchair’s material as Kaldur’s body shifts only slightly in place gives away Kaldur’s intent to move; Conner shakes his head firmly in response. Kaldur had yet to even finish choosing words with which to make the offer.

“You seem… settled here,” he decides to say instead.

“Ha-ha,” Conner responds, propping one foot up on his knee that, intentionally or not, emphasizes his need to maintain his balance where he is perched. The softness of his tone, however, is clearly more than just an attempt to control his volume.

Either way, it is clear to Kaldur that he has been misunderstood as having been speaking shallowly, and it is excuse enough to then focus less on sentiment, more on the tangible realities of the present.

“You do recall my original plan for this evening was to log the latest mission reports from both the League’s Earth-based and galactic contingents into the archives?”

Conner lays his arm across the top of the sofa and leans back as if to counteract the pull of his eyes off to one side. “ _Yeah_ , I _kinda_ remember you saying your Friday night plans were all _deskwork_ …”

“The responsibility for _all_ of whichbeing _mine_ ,” Kaldur continues, “due to the unreliable connection between the Watchtower and Wonder Woman’s current station on the other side of the galaxy.”

“Wonder Woman, Superman, J’onn, and the others, _yeah_ …”

“You might _also_ recall yours and M’gann’s _insistence_ that I would be able to access the archives from your equipment here.”

“Computer _is_ in the garage…”

“So that insistence was merely a _half_ -truth then, and not a full deception.”

The hand laid flat across the top of the sofa curls into a fist. “Listen, I don’t need to be hearing _anything_ from you about—”

M’gann’s head rolls against the back of the sofa, seeking a pillow or Conner’s touch or whatever subconscious expectation has been built from their routine—it is perhaps not Kaldur’s place to speculate, but he need not even begin to suspect that he is not the only one who noticed. Conner’s shoulders heave with the release of a deep breath.

“Yeah, we lied,” Conner then says, lowly enough that the breath emitted from M’gann’s now upturned and open mouth is no less audible than his voice. Though whether that is testament more to the degree of caution exercised by Conner in not waking her or to the volume at which M’gann has suddenly begun to snore, Kaldur is not given adequate time to discern; gripping the back of the sofa with one hand to keep from falling onto Wolf, Conner stretches himself over to reach M’gann, and via the targeted push of two fingertips against her cheek, resolves her snoring by tilting her head back to one side.

The efficacy of this act and how casually it was performed… this strikes Kaldur as _important_ , and near- _hauntingly_ , _achingly_ so. _Why_ , what future use to him as information it could _possibly_ have, Poseidon only knows. He himself cannot fathom.

He can fathom, though, how his face must read, recognizing that his mouth has fallen open. A sound escapes him with intent to be shaped into an apology, but Conner’s words come first, a twinge of defensiveness to his tone as he adds, “In case you haven’t noticed, _lying_ tends to happen a _lot_ in our line of work.”

Work. A simpler thing, of significance no less haunting, but much easier to define. It gives name to the hollow feeling inside Kaldur, right below and between and within his ribs all at once, and it gives a purpose to the ache. 

“I am aware,” Kaldur states. “You have at least informed me, then, that the archives are accessible from this location. _Perhaps_ this will someday prove _useful_ to me, provided either of you ever _grants_ me access and the time necessary to make use of it.”

It is Conner’s turn, last of the three of them, to find himself with mouth hanging open. He closes it quickly though, then crosses his arms against his chest. The flickering of miniscule candle bulbs cannot begin to match the judgment that burns now in his stare, nor can the cool tones of the pervasive blue lighting hope to snuff it out.

It is earned. The man who just spoke holds a venom on his tongue that Kaldur can still taste, can now feel run down his throat—a venom that resonates at the edges of the silence it wrought in a voice unmistakably his own. It could corrode the thickest of armor—proof: the feeling of it in his chest, seeping through the walls of his heart, claiming his heart as its source.

The man who just spoke is he himself, Kaldur knows. Who he has become.

“Y’know, I _am_ pretty settled here.” 

Kaldur is quite capable of speaking Superboy. He has more than overstayed his welcome.

But Conner’s eyes seem to be no longer fixed on Kaldur. Instead, his gaze is directed at the ceiling, past where the blue light cast by the television screen tapers off. It could be an avoidance of Kaldur’s own stare—or of the sight of Kaldur at all—but if so, it is one well acted, for no tension is apparent in either Conner’s face or form. With the deep breath he releases, he appears more to be taking in the sight of stars in the sky than stewing in anger.

To view the sky above through an opaque ceiling is not quite within the range of Conner’s specific Kryptonian capabilities, however, as far as Kaldur understands them—nor is it remotely within his own. Despite this knowledge, something compels him to look up as well. 

At darkness. Simply darkness, contained within the seams of the ceiling’s panels, and containing neither stars nor answers.

“But I know that I _wouldn’t_ be,” Conner continues, “if someone hadn’t once told me something important— _extremely_ important—and left it up to me to make a choice.”

_M’gann_ , of course. Conner’s thinking of her explains his anger subsiding once again. Between the completion of Kaldur’s psychic restoration and the formation of their plan to free her from Black Manta’s sub, there was perhaps more time passed than was effectively utilized, but M’gann had frequently diverted the conversation between herself, Kaldur, and Artemis to other topics; it was at that time that Kaldur had learned of the circumstances of hers and Conner’s breakup, as well as her desire to be completely honest about her feelings with both La’gaan and Conner upon ever being given the chance again to do so. That she felt this desire after having spent so much time removed from the situation, she already knew—what she still questioned was whether acting on it would bring any relief to the turmoil she had caused or only create more pain. Such honesty, Kaldur had warned, was bound to cause pain, but he had assured her that it was the only solution to pain caused by dishonesty—even pain caused to oneself by dishonesty with oneself. 

So many times, Kaldur thinks, has the advice he has dared give others been spouted so convincingly from such a fool’s mouth.

“He told me that _I lived_ , and that I had the right to choose between being a _weapon_ , or a person.” 

_Oh._

Conner’s eyes have fallen back on Kaldur, but though his leaning forward suggests confrontation, there is a palpable softness to his gaze. “I really did need that spelled out for me then—and maybe I don’t always _like_ people thinkin’ that they need to spell things out for me, but—” A shrug. “Guess everybody needs it sometimes. If _you_ hadn’t for me, I wouldn’t _have_ … well, _anything_. Not a _real_ life outside of Cadmus’s control, not a real _purpose_ , not friends… not even M’gann.”

“ _Mmn_?” M’gann’s head rolls back to face them, and blinking herself back into consciousness, she lifts it up from the sofa’s support. “I heard my name, I think? Sorry, I…” A yawn halts her speaking as it contorts her whole face, and upon regaining control of her mouth, she gives a whooping sound to comment on its passing intensity. “I think I fell asleep.”

“Huh.” Conner turns to smile at her. “Hel- _lo_ , Megan.”

M’gann cannot quite reach Conner to bat at the outside of his arm, but Conner seems to take great pleasure in watching her attempt to and miss. Her hand then goes to Wolf’s chest to stay him, though the assurance proves unnecessary even as her whole body, and not just the lap and stomach supporting Wolf’s head, shakes with her laughter. Hers and Conner’s eyes twinkle at each other for a moment—perhaps an absurd way of conceptualizing what is simply a glance, but what Kaldur sees is what he sees—before both of them turn their heads together to meet Kaldur’s stare.

The sudden connection with both of them summons the ghost of Conner’s palm to Kaldur’s own skin, and not until his own hand is sliding back down past his elbow does he realize he has already reached up to find the place on his arm touched by Conner after their brief sparring session. 

He and Conner had exchanged words then about surrenders. Kaldur thinks now that he could in fact lose himself watching the two of them, Conner and M’gann, interact and exist in this space. For better or worse, he cannot quite decide— _neither_ is desirable as the answer, he is sure, to them or to himself. The feeling in his ribs returns, but once again nameless, and this time twisting deeper in towards his heart. 

He has, at the very least, almost forgotten the conversation he is presently in, and the grave misplacement of merit that Conner has committed.

“I… All that I did that night was make an observation of the obvious truth. You simply had been disadvantaged by the circumstances in which you had been placed to be able to see that truth on your own.”

M’gann gives Conner a curious look, and Conner sighs. “Yeah, with you it’s always ‘simple’ like that, huh. Then you wanna hear _my_ ‘observation of the obvious truth’? _You_ live. And you have to choose between being this… _figure_ for everybody, this _role_ you always let yourself get put in, and being your own whole _person_ … or at least figure out a better balance between what you think you need to be for the world and what you need to be for yourself.” Conner pauses to duck his head and rub the back of his neck, awareness seemingly catching up to him that perched as he is on the sofa’s arm, he is in fact an elevated speaker to a captive audience below. “I guess I’d say ‘What would Aquaman do?’ but—”

“But my king has already made a clear choice between two worlds,” Kaldur offers—it is easier to assist Conner than to absorb his words quite yet—“and chosen to focus on domestic affairs as per his role as ruler of Atlantis.”

“S’what I mean. _You’re_ Aquaman now. But you’re not _him_ , you’re _you_ but _as_ Aquaman—so what do _you_ do?”

Kaldur could laugh at the question, and though thankfully no sound escapes him, even the bitter thought of such laughter rings through the hollowness of his chest. What does he do? What _has_ he done, really, but make the same choice time and again? The choice to become deceiver, deserter, _destroyer_ — 

What emotions his face now betrays and to what degree, he cannot know for sure, but they must read as dire, for M’gann rushes to cut his introspection short. “I know the pressure you’d always put on yourself as leader of the Team, Kaldur,” she says with hand to her heart, her own voice soft enough to be avoiding waking the only sleeper left in the room. “I—it— _should_ have been obvious, even _before_ I— _ergh!”_ Her hand moves to the side of her head as a fist and stays there, seemingly a suppression of her trademark gesture as well as of a thought. “Before _you_ passed _that_ mantle onto _me_! And _that_ makes me sound like I’m anything less than _honored…_ which is absolutely not the case.” __

Wolf’s four feet suddenly begin to swing at air all at once, and with the twist of his waist, they touch down upon the floor. He groans in disapproval as he heads towards an empty space on the nearest rug, scorned by one bed for the night and now scornful of all others.  Conner is quick to slip down into the newly vacant seats, sliding himself over to M’gann’s side. 

Only then does M’gann continue, though seemingly having been too distracted by an internal struggle with words to have been distracted by Wolf. “I just know it’s… not easy, always keeping on a brave face like that. It gets… heavy. There’s a reason why when I come home now, I take mine off.”

Kaldur had not thought to comment on her shift in appearance from the Watchtower to here. He has watched her sprout arms and gills, merge her legs into a tail, and pull back flesh and hair from her body to expose lengthening sinew and bone—it is simply within her natural abilities. Nothing about her donning her human guise in her own home was strange enough to require explanation. But Conner nods to Kaldur to confirm M’gann’s statement before casting eyes down to the space between himself and her; as he lifts his hand up into his lap, M’gann’s fingers having intertwined themselves with his own becomes clear to see.

A strange sensation, a tangible warmth and gentle pressure against his webbing, manifests in the spaces between the fingers on one of Kaldur’s own hands. Jealousy is a woefully, sickeningly familiar feeling to him, but it is familiar all the same. Unless it has further warped him from one who would avert his eyes with scorn at his friends’ shared affection into one who would find some voyeuristic thrill at the sight of two lovers’ hands joined—dear Poseidon, he hopes not—it is not what this feeling is.

Reckless enough to risk meeting the eyes of either of them with these thoughts in his head, Kaldur looks up to find M’gann peering past Conner’s chest to watch him. Her expression, however scrutinizing, bares no trace of the judgment or disgust he would expect from one who could sense his present emotions—though he supposes M’gann would take caution not to let such anger show, unless she intended to make it fully known very soon. But it occurs to Kaldur that she is attempting to gauge his reaction; to _what_ becomes all the more obvious when her eyes widen upon meeting his, and she mouths a silent “sorry” after the shared sensation between the three of them is abruptly disconnected. Conner dares to glance at him before quickly averting his gaze back to nothing in particular, seeming to share in her guilt.

Kaldur rubs the insides of his fingers together. It is not that his ability to feel his own skin has been affected by her actions. It is just that left with the physical reality of its emptiness, his hand may as well have gone numb. 

His cheeks, however, burn with more emotions at once than he can pick apart and define. “May I ask what has prompted this… concern?”

“ _Well_ ,” M’gann starts, eyes connecting with Conner’s, “there’s not so much one thing I can—I mean, that _we_ can just point to—”

Conner’s gaze passes from her to Kaldur. “I’d just gesture to, like… all of you—”

“It’s just that we _don’t_ … want to… um…” Anxious searching looks pass between the two of them and beyond, falling to the television and the window, the candles and the books on their shelves. Kaldur waits, has _been_ waiting, for either of them to arrive at the obvious. Their portrait of Mount Justice hangs not just on the wall, but in the air. No object in this room fails to stand as monument to what he took from them, what was promised to them as a sanctuary at the start of their lives in this world only to be brought to ruin at the hands of a friend masquerading as an enemy. Of an _enemy_ self-deluded into thinking himself a friend. 

M’gann releases Conner’s hand to fold her own two together in her lap, squares her shoulders as she faces Kaldur. “We don’t… want to lose you.”

“…Again,” Conner adds, dropping his weight forward onto the support of elbows against knees.

M’gann nods as if swallowing hard, then reaches out to cusp Conner’s shoulder. The fabric of his t-shirt creases visibly near the neckline as her fingertips gather it into a fist then release and smooth it back out. “Again.”

Kaldur rises to his feet on reflex, one developed over his extended time spent on the surface world: seeking elevation to find oxygen. Though that need for air clashes with the sudden dryness of his throat, as it tightens around words he cannot pull from depths inside him but _must—_

“I must apologize then—” __

“ _Please_ stop apologizing—” 

“— _Conner_ , it helps.”

“I would like to apologize for my behavior this evening. I believe that… maintaining a certain distance between myself and… _others_ has proven too easy and too tempting a means of… managing myself. I am afraid I would defend my place in that distance even… with teeth. Aggressively. But what good I have done in doing so has become increasingly harder to tell—even what good _at all_ I have done for myself. I certainly… this will sound selfish, but any further guilt for distress I have caused either of you, I _definitely_ do _not_ need. Nor do I think I have done myself any favors by making strangers of the two of you.” 

Something trickles into his chest, but finds its way there through no break, twist, or ache—he simply feels himself fill up inside, a line up to his heart, a still and weightless presence.

Conner closes his eyes to huff out a laugh, then smiles down at the floor. “C’mon, Kaldur. Bad attitude… chip on your shoulder…” As his head rises, so does an eyebrow as he looks to M’gann.

“Gosh, or letting your emotions get the best of you in general?” M’gann’s hand slides across Conner’s back to his other shoulder, and the arm now around his neck coaxes him back up close to her.

“You _do_ know who you’re talking to, right?” Conner asks, and M’gann reaches across his lap to join him in patting the empty seat beside them on the sofa.

They look at him together as one. It is a kind of oneness, of _wholeness_ , that he will not lie to himself and dare to think that he feels within himself alone—perhaps he never has. But he may just dare to think it at least a wholeness that he feels _himself_ _within_. 

Kaldur’s face settles into a smile as he steps forward.

“I believe that I am talking to my friends.”


End file.
